


Stay

by Lia (Liafic)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Implied Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-24
Updated: 2014-11-24
Packaged: 2018-02-26 20:06:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2664737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liafic/pseuds/Lia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We were never friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay

Cold morning light filters through my window. I have been awake for hours, listening to the hum of the radiator and the slow sounds of his breathing—like the ocean dragging itself in and out of shore. Winter has a way of transforming everything outside that makes a city a city, muffling the traffic and the distant early cries of birds until all that remains is the white silence of snow.

His hair is pale blond against the pillow, and in sleep he doesn’t look arrogant or fierce the way he often does when we are together. He is an entirely different person, someone no one else would recognise. The shadows under his eyes are a starkly fragile blue. Where he lies tangled in the sheets, morning falls over him in the intricate pattern of sunlight through lace curtains.

My fingers flutter just above his chest like a moth, trembling. I know the heat of him and the sound of his heartbeat, all the rough ways his voice can break against my skin. I pull away and cradle my hands together against the pillow. There is nothing for me here that I haven’t already taken, nothing more we could possibly give to one another. I turn away and watch the white sky through the window until it blinds me.

 _This is not yours,_ I tell myself. _None of this was meant for you._

•

They say trauma affects everyone differently, that we all cope with loss in our own ways. I was drawn to him because he asked nothing of me. We were never friends. There was never anything for us to talk about. We were only two people so changed by the events of our childhoods that we no longer recognised one another, and we stumbled into whatever this is the same way all things in life are stumbled into.

We drink too much most nights. Curled up on the sofa in his flat, we forget our own names and cling to each other when we try to stand. I back him against the wall, and his hands push under my skirt. My fingers fumble on the clasp of his belt.

“Come on,” he says, but we are too far gone. We sink to the floor in a tangle. I straddle him and press my mouth against his, hot and clumsy, and the rest is blurry and ends with him shuddering against me. When I pull away, he tilts his head back against the wall and closes his eyes.

“How many times have we done this?” I say. _A hundred times—a thousand?_

“Does it matter?”

“No, not really.” My head is starting to hurt. I want to sleep forever. “I should go.”

“Just stay the night,” he says. “Why do you make this so hard for yourself?”

I stand and adjust my skirt, pull on my scarf and coat. The heat is stifling, and the room swims in the semidarkness. “I can let myself out,” I tell him.

“Whatever, Hermione.”

On the walk back to my flat, the Christmas lights sway in the bare branches of trees along the pavement, still lit in the three a.m. silence of the streets. My hair curls wildly in the falling snow, pinpricks of cold on my overheated skin. In the purple darkness of night in the city, I can still taste him on my lips.

I feel so old—so infinitely tired. I feel as though the wind could splinter my bones.

•

My mother used to set out dozens of poinsettias each Christmas, sneaking them onto every bare surface in the house until the place looked like a department store display. Does she still do that now, I wonder, across the world where she no longer knows my name?

My flat is very white: white walls and white carpets, white kitchen tiles. I once found it calming, in those first few years after everything happened. It smoothed out the sharp edges of a world that was filled with hundreds upon hundreds of shrieking colours. Now it only leaves me feeling empty. If I were to scream, I feel as if the walls would swallow up the sound until there was nothing left inside me.

The single poinsettia I allow myself to buy stands out in this place like blood on snow.

•

I have been crying when he arrives on my doorstep the night before Christmas with a bottle of Wild Turkey and sleepy grey eyes. “I actually didn’t think you would be home,” he says, as if I were the one who caught him by surprise.

“Just come in,” I tell him. There was a time when I may not have been here, but Ron had his own way of dealing with trauma, and we drifted apart long ago. I do not resent him for it. The Christmases at the Burrow of years past seem like something from another lifetime. The truth is that I am clinging to my sadness like a childhood blanket.

Draco pulls off his coat and tosses it over one of my kitchen chairs. The buttons on the front of his shirt are lined up wrong, and his hair is messy and damp from the walk. He sits down to pull off his shoes, and his hands are loose and inelegant as he does so. I am suddenly conscious of my eyes, rimmed with red and still glassy. I run the back of my hand across them and turn away.

“I wish you had called first,” I say.

“We never call.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to see you tonight.”

“I can leave.”

“No,” I reply. “You’re here now.”

He stands and closes the distance between us, and I can smell whiskey and snow on him. He kisses the corner of my mouth and runs his fingers through my hair. “Yes,” he says, and I can feel the word vibrating against my ear. “I’m here now.”

After, we lie in the darkness of my bedroom. I stare at the shapes of shadows on my ceiling, and he breathes into the silence. His arm is still curled around the back of my neck, strong and warm.

“I think we should stop doing this,” I say.

“You always say that.”

“I mean it this time.”

When I turn to look at him, his profile is outlined in a thin line of light from the doorway. He presses his lips to my forehead and sighs into my hair.

•

Winter passes slowly. The streets are quiet and sleepy, and I watch the snow fall outside my window with the same vague disinterest with which I approach everything in life these days. Harry and Ginny stop by a few times during the holidays, and Ginny takes it upon herself to cut back my poinsettia so it will flower again. I don’t have the heart to tell her I was planning to put it out on my balcony, where it could be killed by the frost.

Harry makes coffee for us and whips out a brown paper bag of pastries from the bakery down the way. He always buys much more than we can eat, and usually the leftovers go stale in my fridge. The two of them fill the silence with stories and laughter, and I nod along whenever it feels appropriate to do so.

“Mum is watching James,” Ginny says. “Hermione, you should see him! You know, Harry thinks he spoke the other day.”

“He did speak,” Harry says around a mouthful of croissant, “and no one can convince me otherwise.”

“Oh?” I reply. “What did he say?”

“He told me a secret,” Harry says with a wink. “One I don’t intend to share.”

“Oh, you big idiot,” Ginny says.

I smile into my coffee, and for a moment the reflection in my mug catches me off guard. It ripples and contorts under my breath until I no longer resemble a human being, but the curve of my lips is unmistakeable, an expression I have not seen in months. Outside the window, the snow drifts down slowly. I feel as if I am sober for the first time.

•

A few weeks later, my poinsettia does flower again.

•

Spring rushes over everything with pale blue skies after the last frost. My breath no longer mists in front of me as I walk through the city, my ears rushing with the sound of cars over wet asphalt. The trees along the pavement are dotted with small bursts of green, and I close my eyes and feel warm sunlight on my face.

Time heals all things, and I suppose it has started to heal me.

There are still things I want to do with my life, things I want to accomplish and places I want to see. I have torn out the carpet in my flat and installed a sunny wood floor, and when Harry and Ginny bring James over, the place is scattered with toys and the anticipation of something beautiful. I could try to see my life for the promise it holds. I could fill my flat with flowers until the whole place blooms with colour.

I open my eyes to see him there across the street, as if he has been waiting for me this whole time. In the brightness of day, his eyes are the pale grey of dawn, and his hair is a blond memory of winter. My feet still on the pavement, and he watches me and I watch him—the only two people in the world.

In this moment, it is enough.


End file.
